Tag: InWorldz

Islandz, the official successor to the InWorldz grid, is shutting down, owner Beth Reischl announced today on the grid’s Discord channel. Residents will have ten days to wrap up any current projects.

Reischl, who is also known as Elenia Llewellyn in-world, cited financial difficulties.

“I’m not working for free for another month, period,” she wrote. “I’ve done that for 8 months now and I have to consider my family.”

She said that she will not be making filtered OAR region export files available to members. “I’m not going to spend the next 3 months working for free to filter out stuff.”

Instead, she said, she will simply mail full OAR files to members.

Many creators chose InWorldz as their primary OpenSim home because it was a closed grid. That means that the content could not be exported to other grids via hypergrid teleports, or via OAR exports. According to some creators on the Islandz Discord channel, releasing full OAR files would violate the grid’s original license terms.

“Knowing and willing taking IP like that is not a good legal position to be in,” wrote one group member.

“There are people out there who would take advantage of the full [perm] content,” wrote another.

OAR files are full exports of regions — including the terrain and all the objects rezzed on that terrain. They can be uploaded to any other grid that allows OAR imports, as well as to grid that people have on their personal computers via easy OpenSim installers like DreamWorld. This is particularly troubling with creators who have high-end scripts or animations in their content, which can’t be stolen with regular copybot hacking tools. Competitors will be able to copy those scripts and use them in their own creations, for example.

InWorldz was OpenSim’s most popular closed grid for many years, and was the most popular of any grid for a good portion of that time as well. The decision to release OARs will affect a very large number of creators who came to OpenSim becaase of their trust that InWorldz would keep their stuff safe.

The decision to release the content is extremely controversial.

“Doing that could ruin some creators with all their stuff out in the wild,” wrote one group member.

Most OpenSim grids today either have a fully open policy, allowing all content to travel freely, or have filters in place to keep proprietary content from leaving the grid and taken to places where the scripts can be exposed. Kitely, for example, has a very robust permissions system in place that allows content creators to determine whether their creations can be taken elsewhere.

The important thing is that creators know up front what the rules are, so they can decide whether to bring their content over and how to manage the permissions.

“Quite honestly, I don’t really care if content creators like it or not,” Reischl wrote. “We went through all of this because of them, trying to make everyone happy. Fortunately, I do have all the OARs on my computer.”

As several commentators pointed out, releasing the content without the permission of the original copyright holders is a violation of copyright law.

“The even bigger question is: will the content creators come back? Some of them, upset at the handling of (and communication about) the sudden shut-down of InWorldz, have since moved to other OpenSim grids and will likely not be coming back to set up shop in Islandz Virtual World.”

That’s the question of the day– and it affects everything. If content creators don’t “opt in” (and many have already said they want nothing more to do with Inworldz/Islandz)… their content will be filtered out of OAR files. So even if some ex-Inworldz members return, they may very likely find their lands largely barren even after pulling back in the OARs.

As you say in the article, many members have moved on. Elf Clan is now centered on OSgrid with a 75-region fantasy continent. Elf Clan members are scattered throughout the Hypergrid– on 3rd Rock, Discovery, DigiWorldz, Kitely, OSgrid and other grids– and after some 4 months we’re pretty much settled in our new homes.

After spending a TON of money with Inworldz over 8 years only to lose it all due to extreme mismanagement, we’d have to be out of our minds to support Islandz at $75 a region. Beth has decided to not honor her original agreement with our group, claiming this is a “new company”.

Well, I haz news for Beth: it’s a new age. We’re running our own lands now on three different servers. Our expenses have dropped to the cost of electricity. We’ve found OSgrid runs just as well as Inworldz and offers the added benefits of VARs (super-size regions), Hypergrid access, and full 100% control over our assets and inventory.

Beth has given Inworldz members zero reason to support or even respect Islandz at this point. Our lands and assets were destroyed. It’s unlikely the OARs are going to restore with any degree of success due to the simple fact of so many creators refusing to give Islandz permission to use their creations. Inworldz originally started with six founders, who left one by one because of frustration with how the company was operated. Now Islandz is down to one founder– the same person in charge when Inworldz tanked.

The question is: how many creators trust that one person with their creations? Considering the highly questionable destruction of Inworldz, the fact that no one was told with sufficient notice there was any problems (not even their main Dev was told), considering the way the GoFundMe donations were handled, and that Beth has stated her word and agreements to Inworldz members are no longer valid because this is a “new company”… who will trust their creations to a new grid run by the same person?

And, in the end, Beth Reischl was unable to get enough people to trust her and come back. It’s sad, but it happens. But what makes me so angry about this, is that Beth has (without advance warning) shut down the official Islandz Discord server, leaving Islandz users unable to communicate with each other unless they meet up somewhere in-world before Islandz is shut down. (There is still an unofficial InWorldz Diaspora Discord server, though.) Beth may have done this to avoid the outrage that is no doubt being directed at her, but frankly, she is doing a terrible disservice to those who supported the replacement grid. I’m not impressed.

Some content creators who did notgive permission for their items to be saved in the OAR files saved from the InWorldz regions are going to be furious with Beth over her decision to simply give the unfiltered files back to InWorldz users, but there’s not much they can do about the situation, unless they want to involve a lawyer, which will result in expensive legal fees for the plaintiff. One commenter on the Hypergrid Business article stated:

I am disturbed people are going to receive unfiltered OARs. It means the company failed ultimately to protect the IP licenses of the makers of the products. Permissions will be cracked, proprietary graphic art, assemblies, and programming will be exposed. This is the ultimate insult to the protections that closed grid offered.

Last week, the owner of the former InWorldz grid, Beth Reischl, flipped the switch on its successor: Islandz Virtual World. Like InWorldz before it, Islandz is based on the same Halcyon codebase which forked off from the standard OpenSim software back in 2010. (Purists insist that InWorldz/Islandz is not a “true” OpenSim grid for that reason.)

To add Islandz to your Firestorm viewer, all you need to do is open up your settings (Ctrl-P), and select OpenSim from the left-hand-side menu. Then copy and paste the following into the Add New Grid field, and press the Apply key: http://login.islandzvw.com:8002/

If you had an old account on InWorldz, you can transfer that avatar name over to Islandz Virtual World. Just use this log in screen. Please note that your InWorldz inventory has not been carried over; you are a default system avatar, although a number of people have kindly made free clothing, hair, and body parts available at the spawn point when you arrive in-world for the first time at the Islandz Welcome Center:

I picked up the Ruth 2.0 mesh avatar, some hair (a layered bob hairstyle freebie by Linda Kellie), and a basic clothing applier for the Ruth mesh body, and after about half an hour I had an avatar that I was fairly satisfied with. Here is Vanity Faire (with an “e’) in Islandz Virtual World:

But the Welcome Center was, with the exception of one AFK avatar, deserted on the Saturday afternoon when I visited. The question is: will people come back?

The even bigger question is: will the content creators come back? Some of them, upset at the handling of (and communication about) the sudden shut-down of InWorldz, have since moved to other OpenSim grids and will likely not be coming back to set up shop in Islandz Virtual World. Others may decide to come back and try again.

Many of the original InWorldz residents have also moved on, mostly to other OpenSim virtual worlds. Whether Islandz can recover any of the lost glory of InWorldz remains to be seen. But they’re back; it’s now up to Islandz Virtual World’s new and returning residents to rebuild.

Talla Adam of the blog Metaverse Traveller reports that a team of former InWorldz staff members is planning to set up their own grid, separate from Beth Reischl’s team, which is working to set up “InWorldz II”, an as-yet-unnamed replacement grid for the now-closed InWorldz:

In the wake of the InWorldz shut down, the exodus of refugees to Opensim grids and the declared aim of Beth Reischl (Elenia Llewellyn) and those close to her to launch InWorldz II, other ex-InWorldz staff members say they plan to launch a new grid as well and they intend to port the best of Halcyon code to their Open Simulator version. The grid is called Infiniti and the slogan being toyed with is “Infinite Dreams, Infinite Possibilities – Yours at Infiniti Grid”

…

Legion Heinrichs (John Arnolde), Lecktor, and April Chung were part of the original six founders of InWorldz along with Beth Reischl and two others who Lecktor says he has lost contact with. He said, “Over the years, Beth’s strong type A personality, managed to alienate all of us. As time went on she added David and Jim to her team as technical folks.” Neither David (Tranquillity Dexler), former CTO who left in 2016, or Jim Tarber, who says he won’t be involved with InWorldz any longer after helping to recover content, are involved in the Infiniti project.

Lecktor continued “It is with great sadness and pain that we’ve watched InWorldz deteriorate over the years and what motivates us to this project. We are all excited however with the prospect of helping the Opensim/InWorldz community heal from the hurt.”

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out. I think it will be especially difficult to attract content creators to any InWorldz spin-off grid, given what has happened. As they say: once bitten, twice shy!

Today was InWorldz’s last day. Grid co-founder Beth Reischl estimated that Rackspace would shut off the InWorldz servers at the end of their business day, 5:00 p.m. CST, which works out to 3:00 p.m. InWorldz time. While the main servers have not yet been turned off as of this writing, the InWorldz login server was shut down around 5:00 p.m., leaving only a handful of avatars still online on a few sims. No users can log in. InWorldz is now gone.

Over the past few days, avatars gathered at spots like InWorldz Desert Island 1 (the site of the original welcome centre) to chat and commiserate with each other:

After InWorldz Desert Island 1 shut down (as many sims did throughout the course of the day today), people went over to InWorldz Desert Island 2, which was still up, to spend their last hours together:

Despite heroic efforts by Beth Reischl and her team to do as many OAR backups of as many sims as possible before shut-down, many people are still facing the loss of most of their inventory. Some are bitter and angry; others are resigned. Nobody is happy about this turn of events.

InWorldz was the victim of some poor business decisions and just plain bad luck. In a period of sixteen months, two of the largest and most popular OpenSim-based grids—Avination and InWorldz—have failed.

Does this mean the end for OpenSim? No. Many of the people affected by the Avination and InWorldz closures simply decided to move to other OpenSim grids, such as Kitely, DigiWorldz and the Discovery grid.

But InWorldz is officially dead, as of this evening. Now we wait to see whether a new grid will rise from its ashes.

UPDATE July 28th: After they completed doing the OAR archives of all the sims, InWorldz staff turned the login server back on. If you try to log into InWorldz this morning, you will be able to get into InWorldz Desert Island (IDI) 1, which is the only sim that is left running. Even though Rackspace has not been paid, the servers still seem to be running! Right now there are about 50 avatars chatting with each other. We have no idea how long the sim will stay up, so you might want to come and visit with some old friends before InWorldz really is gone for good!